Staying close to the Swamp: Gators rarely stray from the Southeast

GAINESVILLE - The Southeastern Conference has given West Coast residents a peek at some of its teams over the past few years.

Arkansas played at Southern California in 2005. Tennessee played at Cal in 2007 and at UCLA in 2008. Georgia went to Arizona State last season. LSU played at Washington to open this season.

Florida's trips west have been a lot shorter. The farthest west the Gators have traveled for a regular-season game since playing at USC in 1983 has been to Fayetteville (812.1 miles) to play SEC foe Arkansas. In fact, the Gators haven't done any regular-season traveling outside the region since playing at Syracuse in 1991.

Unlike several other schools in the SEC, Florida doesn't want to schedule any games against schools from BCS conferences that want a return trip - regardless of whether it's a trip west or to a neighboring state.

"We'll never say never, but it would have to be a unique situation for us to vary from our model that we have in place," said Greg McGarity, UF's senior associate athletic director for internal affairs.

The model that McGarity mentioned is this: play smaller Football Bowl Subdivision teams or Football Championship Subdivision teams in the early non-conference games and play a FCS school in the slot between the final SEC game and the Florida State game.

That means no games against schools such as Oklahoma or USC or Notre Dame on a home-and-home basis, with the only exception being Miami, which the Gators played in 2008 in Gainesville and will play in Fort Lauderdale in 2013. The trip to Miami comes in an odd-numbered year, which means the Gators will have only six home games that year: three SEC opponents and three non-conference opponents (the Georgia game counts as a home game in odd years).

That's a rare occurrence, done because of the rivalry with the Hurricanes. McGarity said the university must play seven home games because of finances. Seven home games net the school $15.4 million to $16.1 million annually, so giving up the $2.2 million to $2.3 million UF makes on each home game to play a road game against a BCS conference opponent would cost the school money, even if the Gators were to receive a significant payout.

McGarity said another factor keeping the Gators from scheduling a BCS conference opponent is the annual game with Florida State. Most SEC schools - with the exception of Georgia (Georgia Tech), South Carolina (Clemson) and Kentucky (Louisville) - don't have an annual rivalry game against a team from another BCS conference.

That's a bit of flexibility that allowed Tennessee athletic director Mike Hamilton to schedule 10 games against BCS conference opponents through the 2017 season. Among those are trips to Oregon (2013), Oklahoma (2014) and Nebraska (2016). All three schools will also play in Knoxville. Since 2001, the Vols have played at Notre Dame twice and at Cal and UCLA, and Hamilton said UT is working on a series with Southern California to be played in the early 2020s.

"Some of it is historical in nature. Tennessee has had some history of playing those type of programs," Hamilton said. "The second part of it is related to recruiting. We're a, relatively speaking, small state in terms of population that doesn't produce a lot of Division I football players. Getting into different areas of the country is good from a recruiting standpoint.

"I think the fans want to see those kind of games. ... When you're charging $40, $50, $60, $70 for a home game and people are also making contributions, there's some responsibility to make sure they get to see those kinds of games."

Hamilton said the Vols are scheduled to play N.C. State in the Georgia Dome to open the 2012 season. Alabama has done that the past two seasons - playing Clemson in 2008 and Virginia Tech earlier this month - and McGarity said a neutral-site game against a BCS conference opponent would certainly be something the Gators would consider.

"[Athletic director] Jeremy [Foley] would entertain ideas that may present themselves that might create a neutral-site game that would be unique matchup, Florida-Notre Dame, something like that, that wouldn't require home-and-home," McGarity said. "All those things are always on the table. ... I think it really has to be unique [for UF to do it]. It's got to be a school that the Gators very rarely, if ever, get to play that would really have a tremendous national presence. Thus far, we have not received any of those proposals."

UF coach Urban Meyer said he has minimal input on the schedule, but he would certainly be open to scheduling a BCS conference opponent - as long as it was in Gainesville. Meyer said there were discussions with Utah, his former employer, about scheduling a game between the schools, but it never got serious.

Besides, Meyer said, UF's schedule is tough enough without adding more high-profile teams. According to the NCAA, he's right - at least for the past three years. The NCAA ranked the Gators' schedule the toughest in the country in 2006, and it ranked No. 3 in 2007 and No. 2 last season.

"I'm not sure how all that equates and who does the ranking of schedules, but if you said our goal was to have the most difficult schedule in America, that's not on our pyramid of success," Meyer said. "Our job is to get our guys in position to go to Atlanta [for the SEC championship game]. If that means playing Miami, we play Miami."

There really is no wrong way to schedule, Hamilton said.

"The schools have to do what they think works best for their school," Hamilton said.